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Paraplegic driver takes on motorsport championship

TIM PALMER: When more than 100 drivers line up on a Hobart circuit this weekend to race for the national title in the Improved Production Cars class, one of the racers will already have scored a big win.

After fighting to take his place on the grid for years, Matt Speakman will be the first wheelchair bound driver in the country to earn a motor racing licence and he's not without a chance of taking out the title, as Felicity Ogilvie reports from the Hobart racetrack.

(Sounds of racing cars)

FELICITY OGILVIE: To the casual observer, all drivers look the same as they race around the track. But one of the cars, a 1975 Celica, is being driven by paraplegic Matt Speakman, who is controlling the car without using his legs.

MATT SPEAKMAN: I've got a disk behind the steering wheel that slides up and down the steering column for the accelerator. The brake is a normal disabled brake. It's a hand operated one that's just to the right of the steering column and on that I have a kick-down button that I can down shift the gears when I need to.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Mr Speakman is no stranger to motor sports. He started off racing motorbikes. He was about to become a professional motorbike racer back in 1993 when a drunk driver hit him and damaged his spine.

MATT SPEAKMAN: It was about six weeks in and I remember the moment very, very well. I was just starting to calculate all the things that I wouldn't be able to do anymore and was starting to feel very sorry and down about the whole situation and as I was thinking that I looked up and about three or four beds up there was a young guy who had broken his neck and they were teaching him how to use a blow tube to operate his electric wheelchair.

And I instantly thought, well things could have been so, so, so much worse and from that moment on I just looked at it as a fresh start. I got what not many people get in life at 26; a clean slate and I can go off and do or be anything I want to be in life.

FELICITY OGILVIE: It's taken years of lobbying but Matt Speakman has been allowed to compete in motor car racing.

Donald Potter is the race secretary of this weekend's meet and he says that the original concern was whether Mr Speakman could get out of his car quickly.

DONALD POTTER: It wasn't his driving ability that is actually to do it. If he has an accident it's actually his extraction from the car, he has to be able to prove that he can get out of it on his own and he did that easy.

Yeah, so his upper body strength is probably better than most of our normal drivers and drivers, you know, even though they're sitting on their behind all the time do have to have a lot of fitness and strength so to manhandle the cars around, especially a tight Baskerville raceway.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Matt Speakman has recently won the 1600cc class in Queensland and he hopes to become the national champion this weekend in Hobart.

Among the sponsorship labels on his car is a sign for Spinal Cure Australia - an organisation that Mr Speakman is a spokesman for.

MATT SPEAKMAN: Every day there's another person ends up in a wheelchair in Australia and unfortunately that's a life sentence at the moment. But with Spinal Cure and the stem cell research and other research going on around that, such as bio-scaffolding for the stem cells to actually sit on, it's really exciting and it's getting very close to a cure.

FELICITY OGILVIE: Matt Speakman isn't waiting around for a cure. He's zipping around the track and the race organisers say he's in with a fair chance of winning the national championships this weekend.